Thursday, April 06, 2006

"I want to know the truth...I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers." -George W. Bush, Oct. 5, 2003.

If Lewis Libby's grand jury testimony is true, then the collective thud in the background is the unkind weight of history's fate against this president and likely the return of Congress to the Democrats.

At this point, Libby's revelation that President Bush authorized the leaking of former CIA agent Valerie Plame as a reprisal for her husband's scathing New York TImes op-ed piece against the war in Iraq, may not be technically illegal, but is very well the decisive blow of many in the last two years for this administration.

History will view this president not through the lens of 9/11 as many previously assumed, but as this country's most egregious offender of lies and deceit. The President has shielded the country from the truth, fashioned the lies into patriotism and all the while exposed the neck of our democracy on the chopping board.

That the president would stoop to such Nixonian depths comes to no surprise to the majority of Americans. What it will do is completely galvanized the electorate come the decisive November midterm elections. At the moment, the Democrats could trot out candidates in a coma (or, actual liberal ones) and still beat a Republican incumbent.

It's going to take a near miracle for the Republicans to retain Congress and far more than rigging the voting booth this time around.

If the Democrats do take the House and Senate this fall, look for them to even an old score: the impeachment of the president. That's a given.